


Fourteen

by noifsandsorbees



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Baseball, F/M, season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-27 05:27:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5035621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noifsandsorbees/pseuds/noifsandsorbees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder, Scully and baseball, with a twist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fourteen

Scully’s fidgeting on Mulder’s couch, picking her nails and swirling her beer, sitting cross-legged but unconsciously rocking back and forth, as the Orioles score another run and Mulder yells at the umpire in protest. 

She’s mostly unmoved by the outburst, stuck somewhere between eternal boredom and the need to tell Mulder exactly why he’s wrong, because as close as he watches each and every game, and in spite of his near-perfect memory and pure passion for the sport, his ability to determine when someone steps on the plate versus when they’re tagged is slightly pathetic. She bites her tongue and starts picking at the label, tuning him out as he wrongly explains why the runner, whatever his name is, should be out. There will be a slideshow tomorrow, after he goes through the recording on his VCR with near-painful precision. 

He’ll still be wrong though, she wagers, catching an instant replay out of the corner of her eye where whatshisname’s foot hits the edge of the plate milliseconds before he’s tagged. It’s tediously boring to watch, she thinks. 

Scully’s mostly still tuning out the game as the pitcher catches a fly ball, throws it to first before the runner can get back, then to second for another out, ending the inning at record speed. She peaks an eyebrow in appreciation and Mulder draws her into a sloppy victory kiss before running to grab another beer. 

He mutes the game as commercials come on and goes into an overly simplified explanation of what just happened while she picks and picks and picks; anything to keep herself quiet. The label falls off as Mulder, for some reason she missed, starts ranting about the difference between balls and strikes and there’s not even any goo for her to scrape off the bottle or her nails. She takes a final sip and realizes that even the distraction of swishing the liquid around the bottle is gone. She’s trapped, and her heart starts racing in a moment of panic.

It’s not that she couldn’t walk two feet and get another bottle, or grab his, or really even grab him and shut him up in much nicer ways, but he’s complaining about that goddamn run again and her mouth is open before she can stop herself. 

“Mulder!” She snaps, and he quiets immediately. He’s staring at her in shock, completely thrown by her intensity. “Just...just,” she’s trying to calm down, deliberately taking deep breaths because she really doesn’t want to have this conversation with him. But she’s been correcting him for seven years now and he knows what it sounds like before the words are out of her mouth. “Just, shut up.” 

A minute passes and he stares at her waiting for her to continue, to see just what he’s doing wrong. An amused smirk plays on his lips while he waits. 

“I just, don’t want to talk about baseball anymore.” 

She doesn’t even buy her own lie, so she’s not surprised when he doesn’t either.

“Bullshit. Enlighten me Scully.”

Scully’s nervous and more than slightly embarrassed in advance, and both show on the grin plastered on her face. She runs a hand through her hair, looking off toward the tv.

“I know how to play baseball Mulder.”

“I know that. I taught you.”

“No Mulder. I don’t know how to just hit a ball and play catch, I _really_ know how to play baseball.”

He leans back and raises an eyebrow at her. 

“I grew up on Navy bases, surrounded by two brothers and countless other kids who would find fields in every city we lived in and play almost every night.”

He’s smiling stupidly at her, urging her to go on or at least meet his eye. Scully’s still laughing nervously, flipping her hair out of her face and looking anywhere but him. 

“And uh, I played in school.”

“Why would you hide that you played softball, Scully?”

“It wasn’t softball. We didn’t have a girl’s team, so I just played with the boys. I made the high school JV team in seventh grade and varsity by the time I actually entered the school.”

“Were you guys any good or was it that hard to find players?” 

She’s suddenly excited to wipe that cocky smirk off his face. 

“We won state my last three years. I got MVP two of those.”

He’s openly gawking at her now as she contemplates the best route to tunnel out of his apartment. Scully’s dreading his shit-eating grin once he puts this together with their not-a-date. The hell he’s going to give her is why she hasn’t been able to have this talk before and she considers how quickly she could distract him, make him run laps or chase aliens or push his head down and put his mouth to much better use.

Scully’s relieved when she realizes his brain isn’t working as fast as she expected. Instead he’s testing her, and it’s only then that she dares to meet his eye.

“What position?” 

“Catcher.”

“What was your number?”

“Fourteen,” she pauses while he continues to gape at her. “You’ve never been this turned on in your life, have you?”

“Not even close,” he breathes, and really, he’s looking at her like she’s personally responsible for making the sun rise.

“You do realize that we didn’t play in miniskirts and halter tops right?” 

He nods stupidly, but she knows he has the image in his head anyway. Then again, her sexual awakening came from staring at her teammates’ asses in uniform, so who is she to talk. 

“Mulder,” she states, breaking him out of his fantasy.

“Yeah?”

 

“My original point, was that you may really know how to hit, but you’re terrible at baseball.”

She takes a sick pride in watching his mouth fall open and listening to the humiliating squeal that works its way out of his throat. 

“Watch that run again tomorrow, Baltimore clearly scored. There’s nothing to debate. And earlier when you were yelling at whateverhisnameis, number twelve, for not stealing third, you do realize he wouldn’t have made it three feet? They were watching him the entire time. And this wasn’t even you being petty because the Yankees were losing, you’re just really bad at this. I was really expecting more from you.”

“Scully,” he whispers with total reverence, forgetting to be offended as he stands up, throws her over his shoulder and nearly runs to the bedroom.

***

It’s only later, when he’s tucked behind her, holding her sweaty skin against his own, that he makes the connection she was hoping to avoid. 

“You lied to me,” he teases suddenly.

“So it seems.”

“Why would you do that?”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” she starts and she knows without looking that he’s raising an eyebrow in doubt. “Well, I was planning on lying just long enough to surprise you when I got to bat. You just assumed I had no idea what I was doing, so I was going to let you show me, miss a few on my own and then have the ball boy running laps while you picked your jaw off the ground.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Well, I wasn’t expecting you to… y’know.” She moves his hand to her hip and squeezes gently.

“Dana Scully, are you saying you’ve been lying about your athletic past, because you liked it when I held you? Because really, I could think of a hundred other ways that could have happened.”

 

“Ah, but did you not devise that entire night just for that purpose?”

“I wasn’t planning on it either,” he chuckles into her neck and moves his hand to lace with hers across her stomach. “But then I found it hard to let go.”

“Now the truth comes out.”

“Look who’s talking. You’re a surprisingly good actor, Scully,” he teases. 

“I know how to get what I want,” she quips back.

“Clearly,” he murmurs into her hair, kissing her neck until she breaks into a fit of ticklish giggles. 

He stops and they lay there quietly for a few minutes, his hand toying with hers, his head calculating which batting cages will be open before work tomorrow, because _God, he needs to see this for himself._

“Why did you quit?” he eventually asks.

Scully rolls onto her back and shrugs while her fingers continue to thread in and out of his. “Pre-med didn’t really leave me much time. Plus I was sick of it. I never really loved the game, I was just good at it. Don’t even get me started on how much I’ve always hated watching it.”

“So you were faking that night with me?”

She loves throwing him off, so she turns to face him, letting her head dip into the hollow of his throat, and starts trailing wet kisses to his ear. “I never fake it with you, Mulder,” she whispers, scraping the lobe with her teeth, her voice the perfect level of huskiness to end the conversation. Or so she thinks. 

“One more question,” he groans.

“Mmhm?”

“Do you still have your uniform?”

She looks up, to make sure he sees her rolling her eyes, but then kisses him slowly, one hand gripping his hip and the other wrapping around his hardening cock.

“It’s at my mother’s. We’ll get it this weekend.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my fantastic beta @tofutti-rice-dreamsicle for necessarily kicking my ass again.


End file.
